


Voyage

by scherzos



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Not beta read we die like Gertrude's assistants, Original Statement (The Magnus Archives), Statement Fic (The Magnus Archives), thalassophobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-19
Updated: 2020-08-19
Packaged: 2021-03-05 22:34:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,157
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25982923
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scherzos/pseuds/scherzos
Summary: "New faces aren’t entirely uncommon. The thing is, Summer - my wife - always mentions them. She’s the captain, she knows who’s on her ship. But this guy? He showed up out of the blue. I don’t know how or when. Wasn’t on the boat when we left port, I can tell you that much. We thought he might have somehow managed to sneak on, but stowaways aren’t common. We triple check every inch of the ship before leaving. And stowaways don’t tend to have their papers in order when they get caught. Beck Morrow. That was his name, or at least the one on the papers he handed me when I came to talk to him."
Kudos: 3





	Voyage

**Author's Note:**

> I've rewritten this three times. Will I ever stop? Probably not because I always feel dissatisfied with my writing.

_[TAPE CLICKS ON]_

**ARCHIVIST**

_(throat clearing)_ Statement of..? 

  
  


**ELYSE**

Elyse Leblanc. About my latest voyage between New York and London and what happened during the trip. 

**ARCHIVIST**

Recording date March 15th, 2019. Statement taken directly from subject. Statement begins. 

**ELYSE (STATEMENT)**

My wife and I have worked on boats for years and she’s been a captain for a decade now. I’m a deck officer, nothing fancy. We work on the Kilmore, if you feel inclined to go looking for the boat. But the issue isn’t the boat. It’s the weird little fucker that showed up.

I’m getting old, old enough to have seen some shit in my time. And you know, I really thought I’d seen all the weird, funky shit my job had to offer. Famous last words, I suppose. I couldn’t have known, though. All things considered, it could have been worse, but when you expect a routine trip… well, it’s jarring. The itinerary doesn’t matter. Hell, most of the details don’t really matter. I’m sure a lot of folks who come in have things leading up to these big, bizarre events. A reason for it to happen. But what happened on the Kilmore was just bad luck. It could’ve been any ship. Anyone. Maybe if we’d left a day early or a day later, he would’ve gotten onto another ship. 

  
  


[PAUSE]

**ELYSE (STATEMENT CONT’D)**

This was … two months ago. Like I said, it should have been a routine trip. The first two days went smoothly. No hiccups, fair weather and high morale. I wish I could say it lasted longer, but it’s on the third day that things started getting sour. 

New faces aren’t entirely uncommon. The thing is, Summer - my wife - always mentions them. She’s the captain, she knows who’s on her ship. But this guy? He showed up out of the blue. I don’t know how or when. Wasn’t on the boat when we left port, I can tell you that much. We thought he might have somehow managed to sneak on, but stowaways aren’t common. We triple check every inch of the ship before leaving. And stowaways don’t tend to have their papers in order when they get caught. Beck Morrow. That was his name, or at least the one on the papers he handed me when I came to talk to him. Everything looked real enough. He should have been sweeping decks. But no matter what you told him, he’d be up in the cabin at night. Just watching the radars, listening to the radio for any calls. What I do in the day. I threatened him, so did Summer. Didn’t deter him, though. He was right back at it the next night. By the time I noticed something was really off, though, things had gotten bad. Towards the end of the first week - of a two week trip, mind you - the radio fritzed out. The radars went next. We had no choice but to slow down. Three days, we spent trying to fix our equipment. Engine was fine, everything else was fine. We were flying blind, though. Two other days passed by. We were putting out calls day in and day out, but there were no answers. We were going as slow as possible, but still moving. We were hoping that everything would come back online or that we’d run into another ship that could help us get towed to the UK. But to no avail. The crew was getting frustrated. So was I. Frustration turned to suspicion, though. Nobody had thought twice about letting Beck put out the calls at night and I figured he had to be doing something. There were no signs of tempering to the equipment but I had no other explanations. No one else to blame. So I decided to spend a night on the deck with him. I shouldn’t have. 

For three hours, we sat there without speaking to each other. Every twenty minutes or so, he’d put out a call. I was staring hard at the radio, trying to see if he was doing anything wrong. He wasn’t. After those three hours, though, he got… chatty. 

He looked at me and he said: “Who knows, maybe we’re just too far away from everyone and everything for these things to work.” 

I stared at him for a second. It didn’t make sense. We would have- should have passed at least a boat days ago. Sure, more and more people are using air freight instead of ships because it’s faster, but there are a lot, and I really mean a lot of ships on the water. Not to mention the radio had a really, really long range. Obviously. I told him as much. And he just laughed. He laughed, then said “if I recall correctly, there’s about three hundred thirty-two million five hundred nineteen thousand cubic miles of ocean water on this planet. That’s a lot, you know? And compared to that, this point isn’t much bigger than a grain of sand, is it?” 

I think that’s the exact moment I noticed it. I almost thought he’d lit a cigarette while I was watching him handle the radio. But there was no smell, no cigarette hanging from his lips. No, it was his breath condensing. The room temperature was fine. It was nowhere near below freezing. The thought that he must’ve simply been colder than the room came too naturally for my liking. I guess the realization that he didn’t look… right hit me right after. All that had ever registered was ‘scruffy blond idiot.’ Except the scruffy blond idiot was as pale as a damn ghost, lips blue like he was freezing and eyes a weird, unnatural shade of blue. If you’d told me he was a ghost, I would’ve believed you. I do think he’s dead. Not movie or television zombie sort of dead, but people just don’t look like that. I couldn’t get a word out. I mean, what was there even to say? I don’t know what happened, time slipped my grasp and next thing I knew, Beck was telling me ‘sleep well’ as he was leaving. I decided I wasn’t spending another night around him. Whatever he was doing to the radio, it wasn’t something I could see or stop. And it wasn’t worth potentially getting myself hurt. I have a wife and a kid. I couldn’t do something stupid and leave them like that. Especially not Summer. Whether I was there or not, she’d be trapped on the boat with… whatever he is. I don’t know if me spending the night watching him is what did it. Regardless of the cause or lack thereof, things escalated. 

I woke up in the middle of the day to the boat jostling. The entire ship was a mess. Everyone trying to keep everything secure, not knowing what the hell was making the entire ship shake. But we all knew it wasn’t some bad weather and waves. It was something and whatever that something was, it was _big_. Just getting out onto the deck was a challenge. The boat was rocking, side to side and back and forth. It’s a goddamn miracle that nobody got more than some scrapes and bruises from falling. By the time I got up there, things had calmed down. Barely, but enough so that nobody was getting crushing by a container that day. It’s cruel to say, but now I wish that’s all that would’ve happened. Easier to fill out paperwork and you’ve got something concrete to tell loved ones. But if it was just containers coming loose and crushing someone, I wouldn’t be sitting in your dusty office, would I? Like I said, nobody got crushed. But people did die. Because of a goddamn sea monster. And a big one at that. It’s one thing knowing that whatever’s shaking your cargo ship like a baby with a rattle is humongous. It’s another to see it. As far as the eye could see, the water was darkened by the damn thing’s silhouette. All you could see near the boat were masses of thick, writhing limbs, just below the surface. We were a little more stable now and the crew that had been up on deck began to approach the edge, clinging to the railing. What else could we do but stare at it? Sea monsters, krakens and sea serpents are supposed to be fictional. There’s nothing that big in the ocean. School bus sized sharks? I could believe it. Beck is right about one thing, the ocean’s fucking huge. But not big enough to have something that size go unnoticed. And of course, Beck was on the deck. Awake and looking delighted. Smug, almost. 

The boat started shaking again and several crewmates- Shirley Wallace, Anderson Morin and Sky Howard - got tossed overboard when a particularly rough shake came. ( _she takes in a deep breath_ ) I don’t think I’m ever going to get Anderson’s face and voice out of my head. The panic in his tone when he yelled “something just grazed me!” 

Then it… it opened its eyes. Squids have huge eyes to begin with- and this thing was squid like enough that the proportions seemed to apply. The eye we could see was bigger than the boat. Before we could even think to get anyone out of the water, they were dragged under. All of them at once. I couldn’t look at the water anymore. Days- no, weeks, of torments at the hands of a… a ghost who seemed to be entertained by how terrified we were. Terrified we’d never set foot on dry land again, that we wouldn’t get to see our families one last time because we’d never last long enough to get there. If we could even get there, through waters festering with monsters bigger than any of us could even start to comprehend. 

I was going to toss that bastard into the water after giving him a good beating. He looked rattled, though. Just as bothered as everyone else. Like a kid who went too far with his little prank. Except he wasn’t a kid. And this wasn’t just a prank. If he just wanted to scare us, well.. Maybe he should’ve thought twice before sicking his monster on the ship. I took one step before the ship grinded to a halt and I fell over from the force of the impact. We’d collided into another boat. We were about a day away from the nearest UK port, ended up getting towed there because of the damage. Beck was gone, unsurprisingly. Not sure where he disappeared to, but I think it’s for the better that he made himself scarce. If he wasn’t dead then, I sure as hell would’ve killed him myself. 

As you can guess, the police and port authorities didn’t digest the whole “some prick got us lost at sea and made his pet kraken attack our boat and eat our crewmates” story very well. If you ask them, bad weather got us all turned around and mass hysteria took over when our ship collided with ‘an unusually large blue whale.’ I haven’t been anywhere near the port since. Neither has Summer. We’re still staying in a hotel for the time being. A lot still needs to be sorted out. The cops aren't doing anything, not that they can considering the situation. Especially since Beck Morrow isn’t anywhere to be found. And with the nature of the situation, I thought you would have a better chance at figuring things out. 

That’s all I have to say. 

  
  


**ARCHIVIST**

Statement ends. Thank you, Miss Leblanc. Please leave your contact information at the reception so we can contact you for a follow up. 

**ELYSE**

Will do. 

[THE DOOR SLAMS SHUT AS SHE LEAVES. HER FOOTSTEPS QUICKLY FADE AWAY. ] 

[CLICK]

**ARCHIVIST**

It does appear that this was an occurrence that appeared entirely by chance, judging by the shreds of testimony Basira managed to get out of the remaining crew of the Kilmore. There is no significant location and no real viciousness present. If anything, I’d say that despite the… theatrics, this is a rather tame statement. By all means, it does seem like Beck Morrow picked the first boat he saw and decided it would do just fine to feed the power he serves. It’s worth noting that the three crew members mentioned by Miss Leblanc were reported missing, then dead about a month later. The Kilmore has been under repair, but Basira was able to retrieve photographs of the ship after the incident. Needless to say, the damage done to it was not caused by ‘an unusually large blue whale.’ Not much can be done about the matter, though what does concern me is the presence of another Vast avatar. And until another statement about him is brought here, there’s not much we can do to track him. End recording. 

  
  


_[TAPE CLICKS OFF]_

  
  



End file.
